Category: Personal favourites

One of my new year resolutions this year was to start printing my photos and I’ve done it as described here.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, there was an ambition to make a photo book. And today, after long hours (and days) of selecting, reviewing and putting everything together I’m proud to present the resulting book called “Street Frames”.

It is a collection of my favourite street photos I’ve made since I picked up my first film camera back in 2012. The project I was talking about in my article on Emulsive has also made its way into the book.

Following some good advice from my fellow blogger Yuri, I’m going to use the printed copy as my portfolio and maybe will be able to organize a small exhibition here in my area. For anyone who may also be interested in the book, it’s available through Blurb both in print and PDF.

Some time ago I contacted a guy who runs Emulsive.org website asking how I could contribute to the community. All I could think about was to translate an article or write some kind of film review or my impressions of film photography or something like that. Hardly had I expected what will come out of this.

Last week my feature article went live and it’s about a photo series called “Lonely” that you can also find on my website here.

Please feel free to check out the article and the series, and leave comments there or here if you like.

Recently I’ve finally started to develop colour film at home. Having bought the chemicals several months ago I couldn’t get it going, you know, I had to make the chemicals from powder concentrates and for that I had to bring water to a certain temperature and in order to do that I had to warm water… ugh. Sometimes I felt too lazy to bother or just couldn’t find time.

Anyway, the chemicals are now ready and I’ll develop all my colour film accumulated last and this year little by little. Meanwhile, I really enjoy the results.

Seen above is one of the pictures I took at the swimming pool last summer and the way it came out reminds me once again why I love film. Shot on expired Fuji film plus almost a year of waiting for development, the picture has these dominant colors of red and blue which makes it either kind of cross process-y or somewhat impressionist.

The sign above says: “Let’s make the world a better place”.Lubitel 166, Kodak Portra 400VC

As I’ve obviously missed the time for any looking back posts for the year 2016 (maybe it’s for the best, considering all the negative things), I’d like to jump on a New Year resolutions train. In fact, it’s more than simply a promise, it is an announcement of sorts.

First, a little bit of background. I don’t remember if I ever shared here the fact that I’m a teacher of English by profession. And for quite a long time last year I’ve been thinking if there is any way to combine two of my passions, to English and to photography. Here is what I came up with.

As a personal challenge and a way of being useful to photo community, I’ve decided to start creating learning materials aimed at photographers. I believe there are photogs, both amateurs and professionals, who would like to improve their English, and by making English materials with photography in mind I keep them relevant to those people. Do you travel a lot and need to communicate with people? Do you want to expand your reach to the audience abroad? Or are you looking for foreign contractors? These are cases I want to tackle when posting lessons and materials for this project.

Anyway, as I said, it is a challenge too. To see if it is even possible to pursue this path and keep up the good level of content, and to see if I’m fit for it.

But I would like to take a moment here and encourage you to check out the project’s website, leave feedback here or there, and share it with those who in your opinion could benefit from it. I’d also like to ask you to subscribe to that website as well in order to receive updates. I promise it won’t be too often, once or twice a week. Three times tops, but I’m realistic about my time. Creating learning materials takes time after all.

Whether you decide to be a part of my experiment or not, I want to thank you for joining me in my photo journey in 2016 and I hope we’ll stay this way in 2017. It’s gonna be fun.

Unrelated to any challenges or projects I just wanted to show this photo and share some of my feeling about it.

This woman on the right, walking away with a baby carrier, is my wife, and this was the reason why I made this photo. Another reason was to test either a Zenit camera (Zenit B it was I guess) or Helios lens or to try out Portra film or everything combined. Actually, it doesn’t matter.

The things is, every time I look at the picture I feel like I’m looking at a 3D miniature model of a real life situation. You know, like when you look at a scale model of a city in a museum.

Maybe it is because of its shallow depth of field effect or maybe it’s something else, but from all of my film photos only this one makes such an impression. It feels so real to the point of being creepy even.

Earlier this week I read this wonderful post about one of my favourite street photographers Matt Stuart. There is also a video with him talking about some of his photos and the way he works. Strangely enough, only now I’ve realized that I’ve never googled any videos with him myself, but anyway.

Matt Stuart had a huge influence on me at the time I started. Even now looking at his works I feel this urge to grab my camera and get out there to shoot some great street pics. Just like his! I guess his ability to see paradox, irony, and humour in our ordinary life resonates with what I like about surroundings, and what I’d like to see in my pictures.

This one above was taken in Riga, Latvia near the railroad station. There was some kind of open-air exhibition and I just happened to be there and take some photos. I don’t know about you, but I can see some glimpses of Stuart’s style here, considering doves and legs 😉 or maybe it’s just my emotional bias (probably).

2.

Though I missed the photo challenge last week this one is about frames, which are aplenty in this photo. In all kinds of interpretation.

3.

I just personally like this picture no matter how good or bad it seems to others. Regardless comparisons to masters or haute street photography. And I decided to show it to you.